Swaziland & Davis' Scared

It's not often one sees news about Swaziland, the small country nearly surrounded by gun-toting South Africa.

So what's new in the country with the lowest life expectancy in the world? Rampant corruption, unfortunately. Here's last month's Guardian article "Swaziland government sells maize donated by Japan and banks the cash:"

Swaziland's government has sold maize donated by the Japanese government to feed hungry Swazis for $3m (£2m) and deposited the money in the Central Bank of Swaziland. 

The nearly 12,000 tonnes of donated maize was sold by the ministry of economic planning and development in 2011, but the sale was not made public until an item about the transaction appeared in a performance report the ministry presented to the Swaziland parliament for review last week. 

Swaziland has not produced enough food to feed itself since the 1970s. It depends on international food aid to bridge a gap that varies from year to year, ranging from two-thirds of the country's 1.2 million people in 2007 to about one-tenth of the population this year, after a better than average rainfall, according to the World Food Programme.

For a book set in Swaziland, read Tom Davis' novel Scared:

Nonfiction author Davis makes his fiction debut with a story about two people worlds apart who help each other find redemption. An orphan girl in Swaziland endures her uncle's abuse through visions of "the illuminated man" who she believes will take her to her dead mother's side. When photographer Stuart Daniels discovers the girl near death, he enlists a pastor and a village chief to help her and her two siblings. Facing floods, confronting an aid agency's fraud, and absorbing a brutal attack by one of many desperate starving people may be the only path toward atonement for Stuart's past life.

Town Council Politics & Rowling's The Casual Vacancy

I've previously posted about corruption in India.  How about some shady dealings a little closer to home?

From today's San Francisco Chronicle article "Ex-officials convicted in Calif. corruption case:"

Five former city councilors in a small, blue-collar Los Angeles suburb that became a symbol of political greed were convicted Wednesday of stealing taxpayer money by creating a panel that helped boost their part-time pay to nearly $100,000 a year... The trial was the first such proceeding following revelations that Bell's leadership had bilked the hardscrabble city of $5.5 million, using the money to pay huge salaries to the city manager, police chief, City Council members and others... At the heart of the case is whether the six officials broke the law by paying themselves annual salaries of up to $100,000 to govern only part-time in the city of 36,000 people where one in four residents live below the poverty line.

What's a novel about local council scheming? The Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling:

When Barry Fairbrother dies unexpectedly in his early forties, the little town of Pagford is left in shock. Pagford is, seemingly, an English idyll, with a cobbled market square and an ancient abbey, but what lies behind the pretty façade is a town at war. Rich at war with poor, teenagers at war with their parents, wives at war with their husbands, teachers at war with their pupils... Pagford is not what it first seems. And the empty seat left by Barry on the town’s council soon becomes the catalyst for the biggest war the town has yet seen. Who will triumph in an election fraught with passion, duplicity and unexpected revelations? Blackly comic, thought-provoking and constantly surprising, The Casual Vacancy is J.K. Rowling’s first novel for adults.

UPDATE:  There's a good review of The Casual Vacancy on Novelicious (and also on Pagelady).

Corruption in India & Adiga's The White Tiger

The following is from this Monday's BBC article "India court charges Suresh Kalmadi with corruption:"

A court in India has charged the chief of Delhi's 2010 Commonwealth Games, Suresh Kalmadi, with corruption. Mr Kalmadi and nine others have been charged with cheating, forgery and criminal conspiracy. He denies the charges and has pleaded not guilty. The case will be heard at a fast-track court in Delhi. Estimated to be worth $16.5m (£10m) in funds lost to the exchequer, the case is one of several corruption scandals to have rocked India's government.

A hilarious novel that discusses corruption in India is Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger:

In this darkly comic début novel set in India, Balram, a chauffeur, murders his employer, justifying his crime as the act of a "social entrepreneur." In a series of letters to the Premier of China, in anticipation of the leader’s upcoming visit to Balram’s homeland, the chauffeur recounts his transformation from an honest, hardworking boy growing up in "the Darkness"—those areas of rural India where education and electricity are equally scarce, and where villagers banter about local elections "like eunuchs discussing the Kama Sutra"—to a determined killer. He places the blame for his rage squarely on the avarice of the Indian élite, among whom bribes are commonplace, and who perpetuate a system in which many are sacrificed to the whims of a few.

(The above book review is from The New Yorker. I can't find the original New Yorker page it comes from, but here is the Amazon page I found it on.)